Helen Garner is one such hybrid. She gives memorable readings. She gives lively talks to feminist groups and adult education classes. She reviews plays and books for various newspapers. She writes autobiographical essays for magazines. She is articulate and approachable. She is very easy to interview. She is extremely ‘good value’ as a ‘flavour of the month’ author because of these varied talents.

But what happens to discussion of her actual writing beneath all this hype? It seems that the selective and élitist star system, whilst appearing to promote Garner and women writers collectively, can in fact work rather negatively. One effect of the star system is to separate the individual woman off from the rest, as if she were the exception. This kind of promotion tends to work against a wider consideration of the immense variety of current women’s writing.

The other more insidious side effect of the star system is upon the star herself. She receives lots of promotion and attention which must boost her sales, as well as her ego, but at what cost? In the case of Garner, the cost lies in the image of her which has been chosen by the critics and the media for her ‘promotion’. In article, interview, and review, particular phrases recur almost ad nauseam. Garner and her writing (the two often seem to be synonymous) are repeatedly described as ‘modest’, ‘slim’, ‘quick’, ‘chiselled’, ‘finely etched’, ‘obsessive’, ‘minute’, ‘miniaturist’, ‘slender’, ‘small’, ‘meticulous’, and, much to my relief, ‘still prey to the housewifely impulse’. It seems that the media, whilst appearing to boost Garner, has in fact designated her as incontrovertibly ‘small’ – in both physical and literary stature.

It may be true that Helen Garner is a ‘small pixie of a woman [and] ... engaging’, just as her four volumes of fiction are all fairly slim (the longest is 245 pages). But it is the relentless insistence upon these ‘facts’ which concerns me. One wonders whether Patrick White’s only claim to fame is that most of his novels are ‘thick’, ‘long’, ‘solid’, and therefore valuable. If Helen Garner were six feet tall with a training in Judo, would the literary assessment of her be different? I’m not arguing about whether Garner is a physically small woman, just wondering why her promoters have felt it necessary to mention this in almost every newspaper article about her over the past six or seven years.

This emphasis on Garner’s physical attributes has leaked over to become part of the assessment of her writing. It is an utterly irrational and metaphorical leakage, yet it pervades. Is it valid though? Is Garner’s writing chiefly characterised by a ‘miniaturist’ delicacy? It seems to me that Garner’s promoters have chosen to emphasise this aspect of her writing for a variety of possibly suspect reasons. The most commented-upon aspect of her work among people I know is definitely not the ‘modest fineness’ of Garner’s fiction. Rather, most pleasure seems to be derived from her capacity for immodestly sharp social comment – taut with wit and the weight of bitter experience:

She could do it quickly now without saying anything, thus adding a drop to the subterranean reservoir of resentment that all women bear towards the men they live with, particularly the ones they love; or she could point it out to him in a pleasant tone and they could discuss it like civilised people. Why did they always have to be bloody trained?

Here the task of mending a school uniform is portrayed as a battleground of sexual politics, a major test in the attempted establishment of an equal relationship for this new couple. Sexist commentators would describe the task, the issue, and the feelings engendered, as ‘trivial’. Yet it is just such pertinent details which dominate in Helen Garner’s fiction. The term ‘trivial’ would obviously be unacceptable in promotion publicity. But is the continual designation of Garner as ‘small’ or ‘minute’ really so far away, in essence, from just such a judgement? There seems to be a subtle subtext to all the hype and praise. It goes something like this: ‘Garner is undeniably good, but look how small [read trivial] she is’.

Part of Garner’s appeal is that she is seen to be a ‘small’ unthreatening feminist, unlikely to disturb the male tradition of long, thick, ‘serious’ novels. This description of Garner as acceptably modest appears to have dogged her since her high school days. In an autobiographical description of a school dance, Garner recounts how the headmistress, inspecting the girls for signs of ‘commonness’,

dragged me out to the front in my square-necked, high-necked, frump-necked, flat-necked horrible cotton dress with wattle flowers printed on it, my ugly white shoes whose sandshoe polish was already showing cracks.

‘Now why can’t everyone be like Helen? Modest and plain.’ The boarders, strapping Western District girls with bosoms, sneered. I burned.

I wonder whether Garner still burns at the media’s uncanny perpetuation of this faint but damning praise. For she is still being held up to us as an exemplary model.

The headmistresses of the publishing/media world seem to be pointing her out to other women writers, as someone to emulate. She is seen to be amusing, modestly stylish, with a degree of ‘accomplishment [which] … is traditional, not experimental’ [read: ‘not too new and disturbing’]. Best of all, she is seen to be fair-minded in her politics, with her sympathetic portraits of liberal-minded men. On the surface, Garner may be all these things; but, just as years ago there was more going on beneath the plain cotton dress than the headmistress dreamed of, so it is now. Garner explicitly states that her aim in writing is to ‘keep the surface simple, but convey a depth of meaning underneath’.

In fact this is a good description of her most recent book Postcards from Surfers. In this ‘slim’ volume, with its ‘plain and modest’ grey cover, I detect signs of rebellion in Garner. The surfaces are smooth and evenly honed but the wit is sharper and the risks taken are greater. She is experimenting more, though not many of the stories could be called ‘experimental’.

Garner has said that ‘women should scream and shout more’ about their oppression. She adds that she is ‘one of those people who tend to suffer in silence’. However, her writing constitutes not silence, but a voice. A voice which has been growing in confidence, strength, and range over the past few years. From the rambling tones of obsessive reminiscence that she created in Monkey Grip, to the sharper vignette style of Postcards, Garner’s voice is always easy to listen to. She has not been ‘plain’ for a long time. Critics and reviews all comment favourably on her polished and precise style.

Nor has she been silent for a long time, her fiction appearing at regular intervals since 1977. She says she began writing as a result of her involvement in the feminist movement. With these origins, I suspect that her voice will not continue to seem ‘modest’ for very much longer, though it is always risky to predict what an author will produce next.

In the future I’m looking forward to reading more of Garner’s fiction, enjoying more of the delicious immodesty which glints through her adept surfaces. And I’m hoping that the hype will stop. That reviewers, critics, and interviewers will stop talking endlessly about Garner’s ‘smallness’ and focus on other, more interesting aspects of her work.